The agency, in its application pending at the Federal Highway Administration, defines the I-95 toll “facility” as extending 179 miles from the North Carolina border to Massaponax in Spotsylvania County.

“If they really intended to limit this project, they would have stopped it at Petersburg. It’s very clear this is just the first step (northward),” Werderman said.

McDonnell, who launched the toll idea, is now getting more pushback.

“When you get into the business of tolling existing roads, it’s a whole different deal,” says Bob Chase, who heads the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance.

By contrast, Chase said, boosting the gas tax from 17.5 cents to 27.5 cents would yield an additional $500 million a year.

“If you doubled the tax, you could get caught up now.”

Though the Trucking Association supports a hike in the gas tax as the most equitable way to spread the cost, others aren’t sold on the idea.

One alternative percolating in the General Assembly would abolish the gas tax, raise the state sales tax and dedicate the proceeds to road construction and maintenance.

Boosting the sales tax from 5 percent to 5.9 percent would raise about $800 million annually and be “revenue neutral,” said DelegateDave Albo, R-Springfield.

“It solves the problem of the gas tax cratering,” said Albo, noting that inflation and higher-mileage vehicles have diminished the value of the 17.5-cent levy.

McDonnell earlier this month said the purchasing power of Virginia’s gas tax has effectively declined 55 percent since 1986.

But Albo cautions that boosting the sales tax “doesn’t solve the problem. It just means we’re not digging a deeper hole.”

Without taking a position on taxes, Werderman says his politically eclectic organization has consensus on one point: “This whole (toll) thing should be brought to the General Assembly.”

“Unelected bureaucracies should not be making decisions like this. Right now, the General Assembly has no authority to deal with (the toll plan). This is a major sticking point for us,” he said.

The Virginia Chamber of Commerce is keeping its options open until the lawmakers convene.

But expressing the frustration of taxpaying motorists, Chamber president and CEO Barry DuVal said, “We want to stop the crossover of funding from new construction into maintenance.”

Scott Drenkard, economist with the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation, said hiking the general sales tax could compromise Virginia’s competitive position versus neighboring states — all of which have higher levies.

DYNAMIC: New toll lanes on I-495 in Northern Virginia adjust pricing according to demand — the more traffic, the higher the toll.

Ideally, Drenkard said taxes should be assessed “closest to the people who use the roads.” He applauded the commonwealth’s expanding use of high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, which offer drivers the choice of paying for express access or settling for slower, “unpriced” lanes.

HOT lane additions on I-95 north of Fredericksburg are under construction by private contract. HOT lanes on a section of I-495 use flexible “dynamic pricing” to raise or lower tolls according to traffic volume.

“There, you have a market mechanism working,” Drenkard said.

In any event, the Tax Foundation warns that continuing to tap general-fund sources for road work is a dead-end proposition.

In fiscal 2013, the Old Dominion is anticipated to spend $4.1 billion on roads, though the state’s gas tax will raise just $961 million of that.

The shifting mix of taxes and tolls stokes skepticism among the fiscal conservatives at Americans for Prosperity.

Audrey Jackson, who heads AFP in Virginia, notes that neighboring Maryland has long had border-to-border Interstate tolls, as well as higher gas taxes.

“And they still say they don’t have enough money,” Jackson says.

Adam Fried, owner of Atlantic Builders in Fredericksburg, voiced similar misgivings about government inefficiency.

“It takes forever just to get a turn lane in,” Fried told Watchdog. “Timetables are so flexible, they’re seemingly non-existent. Fredericksburg could have had a bypass years ago, but now the area’s all filled in and it’s too late.”

Kenric Ward is the San Antonio-based reporter for Watchdog.org. A California native and veteran journalist who has worked on three Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers, he received a BA from UCLA (Political Science/Phi Beta Kappa) and holds an MBA. He reported and edited at the San Jose Mercury News and the Las Vegas Sun before joining Watchdog.org in 2012 and previously reported from Virginia. Kenric can be reached at [email protected]